Waiting
by ThereBeDragons17
Summary: The one billion and first take on this subject on this website. Elessar died first, but all it meant was that he'd have to wait longer. Sort of a companion/cap-off story to Dragons in the Garden.
1. Chapter 1

**This is based (loosely) off of** ** _The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen_** **and** ** _The Return of the King_** **. All of the bits from my story** **Dragons in the Garden** **are mine, but everything else is not.**

* * *

She never realized how central her world is around him until the day he dies.

Then her whole world collapses. The ground crumbles away beneath her feet and the sky arches upward until it tears. The grasses and trees and rivers are all blown away by the force of her sadness, and all the creatures seem to bear some resemblance to _him._ The only ones she can pick out are her son and three daughters.

They give her husband a grand tomb of stone, carved so finely and inlaid with so many precious things that it could buy a kingdom. She does not think that he picked out this tomb. He would have been more frugal with his coin, she thinks. His three names are inlaid in the stone; Estel on the side facing east, Aragorn on the side facing west, and Elessar on the lid. On the top of the tomb is a stone carving of a man meant to look like Elessar in death, and in the hands of this impostor they place the sheath of his sword. The actual sword and mithril crown are buried with him.

Then they let him rest in Silent Street.

She cannot stand to be in that palace any more, the halls she walked with him, the bed she slept in with him, the gardens and library that he poured so much of his time and effort into. The library rivals those of Rivendell and Lothlorien; Elessar flooded scholars with funds to collect and restore works of poetry, lore, and art, so that his palace is more a museum than a home.

She sits in the garden one day and looks at her rose beds. She tended them with so much care before. Smiling sadly to herself, she remembers the day that her children—his children— constructed a castle in this garden from empty wine barrels. They crushed her roses then, but now they have grown back. She remembers how Elessar and Faramir helped the children, stacking the barrels and moving the bench she sits on now. The bench Gilraen and Aralia had stood on, watching Eldarion and Elboron fight to protect them.

The smile is gone from her face now.

They are gone. All of them have departed; Elessar, the Steward Faramir, the Lady Eowyn. They live on through their children, through Elboron, Eldarion, Aralia, Gilraen and Elwen, who are now the lords and ladies of the land. Who have been married off to husbands and wives. She is a grandmother now, she remembers. A grandmother to two shining boys and one beautiful girl.

It is a cruel twist of fate that she should outlive all but her children. Her family by birth has long since past over the glistening seas, and her family by marriage is encased in stone. Only Eldarion and his wife and son remain in the palace with her now.

As the days pass, she keeps looking around for Elessar's comforting, easy smile, to hear his booming laughter echo from the lower levels, to find a gathering of lords headed by her husband conversing in the library. She does not find any of these except for the lords, who whisper in hushed tones and bend their heads to her when she passes, acknowledging her grief when she all she wants is to forget it. She tells herself to stop looking.

When winter is at its most dead, she realizes that she will never stop. As long as she remains in these halls she will search for him, and all the while he will lie on Silent Street, forever hidden from her eyes. She hides her face behind a black veil for weeks after his death, and even as the city moves on from a whole month of mourning, she remains encased in her sorrow. The man she gave up immortality for has passed on. She has no purpose now, other than to guide her son and daughters for the home stretch.

She leaves one day, hoping to slip out of the city of men unnoticed and retreat into the woods. It does not go as planned. Even though she gathers her things and exits the huge gates in the dead of night, they are there. The city stands, lining the streets, all the men bearing torches and the women bowing their heads to her. They are silent, but they are there for her, their eternal queen. As she nurtured them in their youth they nurture her in her grief. They respect her decision and as her white horse passes them all by someone starts to sing.

She recognizes the song instantly, but not the singer. It is the song Elessar sang on his coronation day, given new meaning. It is a symbol that what he started is ending.

She cries, and the city cries with her. That these humans are capable of such empathy shakes her to the core. Elves never were, but the thought of her kin brings more tears, and she crosses the gates weeping.

She expects them to close the great doors behind her, but they do not. Just outside the gates they have built a funeral pyre so large that it could encompass most of the Great Hall of Edoras. They set it alight as she rides away. It is for their king and his queen, and the passing of Lady Arwen will live on in lore for centuries to come, until the world freezes over and everything is lost.

She rides up the River Anduin until she reaches the woods of Lothlorien, and there sets her horse free. She ventures back to Cerin Amroth, where she and her love renounced the Shadow in the east and spent one last day together before his departure, many years ago before the War of the Ring. Now again she stands on the hill, looking eastward, again without her love or hope.

She considers venturing into Lorien proper, or even to Rivendell, but she cannot take any more ringing pain unless all her insides are carved out to leave nothing but a hollow husk. To see the abandoned halls of her people would drown her in her sorrow, she is certain, but she knows that she is already drowning.

She has lost her will, and lies on Cerin Amroth for a long time. Lorien has never counted time in the way men tally it, and the only indication she receives that time has indeed passed is the fleeting comings and goings of the sun, and the leaves changing from green to red and falling to the ground around her. This above all else tells her that her kin are gone. The forest of Lorien dies around her still form.

Winter has come, but she does not feel cold. She has been cold in her heart for so long that cold in her flesh has no meaning.

Snow falls one day, large, powdery flakes that settle on and around her, and she closes her eyes for the last time.

 **NOTICE! If you feel like being sad, stop here and hit the little back arrow at the top of your screen. If you want a happier ending, continue on to chapter two.**


	2. Chapter 2

And opens them again.

She has heard of this, this after-life that elves venture to once their bodies and minds become too weary for the mortal world. But this is for elves. She knows that she will not see him here and the idea that she must endure countless lifetimes without him condenses into salty tears that run down her face in a flood.

Arms close around her, and the familiar scent of rain and dirt envelops her. She does not need to open her eyes to see who it is, but she does so anyway.

Elessar beams down at her, wiping away her tears with his thumb. He glows with health and youth she had not seen in him in decades.

"Estel, my love, you died…"

Elessar, Estel, her Hope, smiles down at her. "It simply meant I had to wait a little longer for you, m _elamin_."

He kisses her, and when they pull away she can see those behind him, all those she knew and loved, living in death and forever eternal. Her father and her mother stand arm in arm, and beside them her brothers, with Galadriel and Celeborn standing politely adjacent with Faramir and Eowyn next to them, accompanied by lords and ladies of both elves and men, all passed on, not into nothingness but simply to the next stage of life.

"I thought you were gone," she whispers in her husband's ear. "I thought it was the end."

She can feel him smile.

"Arwen, there will never be an end. I will always wait for you."


End file.
